


Can We Handle Being Kids?

by ParadoxicallySpeaking



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, British Sixth Form AU, During sixth form, Everyone is Queer, F/F, F/M, I asked a friend, If you're wondering why so many ships, It's d'Artagnan are you even surprised?, Loosely based on some of the Antics, M/M, Multi, The Misadventures of the Fencing Club, Trans Character, also I hate writing summaries, and she basically said "all of them" so..., idk even know where the plot will go, maybe more ships too idk, more characters to come! - Freeform, that me and my friends have Suffered through, which to use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadoxicallySpeaking/pseuds/ParadoxicallySpeaking
Summary: The Fencing Club is almost ready to begin, with just a few spaces left to be filled before the college faculty will consider the club viable. Easy, right? Well, then there's everyone's A-levels: they've only got a year left, they're already running the GSA, and the cracks caused by stress are starting to show on everyone.René's struggling through Spanish, Charlie is behind on at least a fortnight's worth of art coursework, Porthos is wondering how English Literature could involve any more essays than it already does, and sometimes Olivier seriously regrets taking Maths.Connie's the only one with her shit together.
(AKA the Sixth Form College AU that nobody asked for or even wanted but I wrote anyway...)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to tumblr user agents-of-mimg, who is a constant supply of joy, inspiration, and encouragement to get this done and to "make it gay". She also beta'd.  
> Thank you, Del, you're the bestest and without you this fic wouldn't exist. I hope it gave you joy, at the very least.

“A-level Spanish is going to kill me!”

Porthos rolled his eyes quickly, but nevertheless caught his best friend as René ‘fainted’ into his arms in the middle of the Maths corridor. “Tell Anne I love her. Tell Connie to keep her safe for me.” He croaked out. A first year squeezed past, grumbling under her breath. Porthos propped René back up on his feet so they were no longer taking up all the space.

“Dude, just ask Anne tutor you.”

René crinkled his nose in disgust.

“Ugh, you’re still trying to impress her? You’re doing pretty well, you both know that. She’ll probably be more impressed that you asked for her help than struggle in silence.”

René gave Porthos a look, before sighing. He wondered when his best friend got so wise. “I’ll speak to her,” At Porthos’ raised brow he tacked a promise onto the end.

They found Olivier leaving the classroom at the end of the corridor. He grumbled something about Statistics modules never ending and being the gift of the devil as he followed the two of them to the Media Studies department. René opened a door with a battered paper print-out poster reading ‘ _GSA – Gay-Straight Alliance! Every Friday at 1! ROOM 74_ ’ and once they all squeezed through, Olivier threw himself unceremoniously into the nearest chair.

Connie looked over from where she was perched on Charlie d’Artagnan’s lap at the front of the room. “Nice to see our Token Straight Friend is as grumpy as usual this fine Friday.”

Olivier huffed. René took a seat next to Anne who was giggling at some shared, private joke Connie had just leant over and whispered in her ear. Porthos pushed himself onto the table at the back, legs dangling off the edge.

Charlie nuzzled his nose in Connie’s hair as she turned to the computer and brought the Google homepage up onto the interactive whiteboard. “So, is there anything anyone has seen in the news or whatever recently that you want to discuss?”

Olivier pulled three cans of Coca-Cola out of his backpack and placed them around him in a circle on the table. Leaning back in his chair, he kicked his feet onto the table to prop himself up. “I still don’t see why we do this. What’s the point? It’s just us, everyone else stopped coming when the student counsellor left.”

“Because!” Anne retreated into herself at her outburst. It seemed she surprised even herself. René smiled at her. She continued, quieter now – but not by much. “Because Connie and I – and I’m sure everyone else here, even you – believe that this club should keep going for anyone who’s realising they’re queer or on the LGBT+ spectrum, especially for new students and first years, who may not have the support they need.” Her eyes narrowed suddenly, as she looked at him. Her voice dropped into an incredulous whisper. “Don’t you remember how hard it was for René to come out?!”

Of course he remembered. René was the first of any of them to come out. It was back in year 9, and he had been terrified of what the others what think of him. Olivier had never seen René afraid of speaking his mind before; had never seen him hide within himself before or since; had never seen him so low.

Olivier raised his hands and nodded. He was looking more at René than her, but it was a surrender and an agreement to her sentiment that he, too, felt like the GSA was worth continuing all the same.

“I just wish we got to do that. Help people.”

Charlie sighed. “Don’t we all, Olivier?”

It was left at that.

Connie tapped her nails on the computer desk. “If GSA clearly isn’t happening,” she continued, now standing. Charlie slipped over to sit cross-legged next to Porthos on the graffitied classroom table. “Then we could at least try to sort setting up our other club we’ll be running.” She rifled through Charlie’s bag to find one of his many notebooks. This one was purple, spiral bound with blue polka dots on the cover. She perched on the surface of the table Olivier was sat at.

“Fencing club.” She opened the book with a flourish, glancing over the scribbles in her, Charlie’s, René’s, and Porthos’ handwriting. “Okay, so Anne agreed to run the club and deal with all the boring stuff,” Connie flashed a grin at her girlfriend. “We’ve got the funds from Olivier’s parents, Porthos’ sports teacher, Tréville, seems really enthusiastic to be the teacher in charge of the club, and so far we’ve got the days narrowed down to Wednesday or Thursday.”

“Not Thursday.” René interjected.

“I’m tutoring him.” Anne finished. She watched Porthos’ nod of approval to his best friend and smiled.

“Wednesday it is, then!” Connie nodded, catching the pen Charlie threw to her from across the room without even thinking about it. She scratched the word Thursday out. The two of them had the most energy of any of the group; were the most in sync. They seemed to operate on a different wavelength, something too extreme for most people to tap into. She threw the pen back, and Charlie laughed as Porthos jokingly elbowed him so it hit him in the face. Constance frowned.

“We still don’t have enough people signed up to make the club ‘ _viable_ ’.” This was punctuated by some booing from the back of the class. Connie raised an eyebrow. “We’ll find people. We _will_ make it work. Two more isn’t too many to find, we can do that. We’ve got René’s charm on our side.”

Olivier remembers being somewhere near the end of his second can of coke when Charlie and Porthos were watching music videos on the interactive whiteboard, and Connie and Anne were sketching some ideas for fencing club posters. René had his phone out and was probably on Instagram. Olivier muttered again, masked under the sound of Charlie playing Hayley Kiyoko’s Rich Youth for the second time that day, that he wished that something would just happen.

And that was when the door flung open, and in she strode: leather jacket, black skinny jeans, high-heeled boots, styled hair, and red lipstick.

“…Milady,” Charlie mumbled from the back, the first of them to break the silence and stop gawping. She gave him a falsely coy smile.

Olivier’s head flopped backwards, and as if talking to whatever higher power there is out there, mumbled, “This is not what I meant by wanting new people to join.” He turned his head towards her. “Anne, why are you here?”

She smiled at him, but then not at him. Her eyes landed somewhere near – or on – Connie. She turned behind her and pulled in a smaller black girl, very sweet-looking and wearing a light pastel blue cardigan over a pink vintage summer dress. “This is Sylvie, I found her pacing around in the corridor. She’s a first year.”

Connie smiled at the girl and pulled out a seat for her. She immediately fell into her role of almost-mothering her, trying to make Sylvie feel more comfortable and welcomed.

Charlie walked over to Anne – not _their_ Anne, well _used to be_ their Anne, but the other Anne, Anne the Second – and lead her outside the door. “You didn’t just come here to bring us a girl you barely know,” he looked back through the doorway, to where most of the group had recovered from their shock. “And you must’ve known coming here would rile up Olivier at least. So, why are you really here?”

Anne the Second looked at him strangely. A very soft expression that almost belonged more to René or Porthos than her. An expression he hadn’t seen for a long time. She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then dodged his question. “She was wandering around in circles. She couldn’t find the room and didn’t seem to want to ask anyone for help. She clearly feels she needs to be there. I think she’s shy.” Anne the Second stopped for a minute before her features moulded themselves back into her usual daring smirk. “I missed you.”

Charlie turned to leave, nothing had changed; she was still trying to get on their nerves. “You don’t change, do you, _Milady_? I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, but I don’t think I like it.”

“Wait.” Her voice was softer now, and he almost hated the way he stopped exactly then. “I missed all of you. I miss being part of a group who understand me-”

“We don’t understand you, not anymore.”

“I’ve thought about what I did, and I know I was wrong. I wouldn’t act like that now, I’m trying to be a better person.” Her voice grew quieter to his ears. “Please, d’Artagnan. You guys were my only true friends. I- I want to be part of something again.” He heard her approaching. “And I’d really like to join your fencing club.” Her smile looked out of place on her lips, like she wasn’t used to it anymore and was trying to remember exactly how.

He looked at her, and her face brightened. “But don’t do anything to try and rile any of us up. Don’t make me regret giving you a second chance.”

It was then that Charlie walked back inside and curled up in the chair next to Connie, his head on her shoulder. They had a lot to talk about that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Gravel To Tempo by Hayley Kiyoko and chapter title from Girls And Boys by Blur.  
> I don't even know where this is going, so don't expect regular updates because this is going to be all over the place. It's mostly an experiment to try and write something different from my usual stuff.  
> There really was a kid at my GSA last year who would bring a steadily increasing number of cans of coke to meetings. As Athos wouldn't be able to drink on college premisces, I found this a pretty decent substitute.  
> I'd like to say I have my shit together as much as Connie does, but I'm steadily Suffering through my second year and I'm just constantly stressed about everything and I procrastinate all the time. I'm also becoming lazier as the days go by. I'm just Tired.  
> If you all had even a fraction of the fun reading this as I had writing it then my work here is done. Now go listen to Gravel To Tempo!


End file.
